Weeks of declining numbers of covid-19 patients in hospitals, intensive care units and on ventilators in Arkansas stalled on Friday. The number of hospitalized covid patients rose by two, only the third increase since the number hit a record high in late January.
The state’s death toll from the virus, as tracked by the Arkansas Department of Health, rose by 20. It was the lowest daily increase in deaths in more than a week.
With recoveries and deaths exceeding new cases, the number of cases in the state considered active fell by 419, to 3,681. It was the first time since June that the number was below 4,000.
While the number of hospitalized covid patients was 412 on Friday, down from 410 on Thursday, the total was still down more than three-quarters from its January peak.
After dropping the previous two days, the number of patients with the state’s virus who were on ventilators held steady Friday at 68. The number of those patients in intensive care rose by five, to 131, after falling the previous three days.
The 20 deaths reported on Friday, which brought the state’s toll since March 2020 to 10,681, depart from a recent rise that included an increase of 55 deaths on Tuesday and 50 on Thursday.
The average daily increase in the death toll over a rolling seven-day period rose from 40 on Thursday to 37, which was still above its peak last summer during a wave of delta-variant infections. .
The state’s case count rose by 485 on Friday. That was more than four than the increase a day earlier and 162 than the previous Friday, when new cases were likely affected by a reduction in testing. due to a winter storm that hit the state.
The state’s average daily case count increase over a rolling seven-day period rose Friday to 583, which was still down from an average of nearly 740 per day a week earlier.
Since the start of the pandemic, Arkansas has recorded 822,202 cases of covid. Of these, 807,604 are considered recovered. The number of Arkansans considered fully immunized with vaccines stood at 1,569,055 on Friday, just over 55% of the vaccine-age population.
More details in Saturday’s Arkansas Democrat-Gazette.